I have read, pondered, researched, taught, and written about the writings of Paul for forty years, but until recently there was one key aspect of his theology that I could never quite get my mind around. I had the hardest time understanding how, exactly, he viewed Christ. Some aspects of Paul’s Christological teaching have been clear to me for decades – especially his teaching that it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that makes a person right with God, rather than following the dictates of the Jewish law. But who did Paul think Christ was exactly?

One reason for my perplexity was that Paul is highly allusive in what he says. He does not spell out, in systematic detail, what his views of Christ are. Another reason was that in some passages Paul seems to affirm a view of Christ that – until recently – I thought could not possibly be as early as Paul’s letters, which are our first Christian writings to survive. How could Paul embrace “higher” views of Christ than those found in later writings such as Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Didn’t Christology develop from a “low” Christology to a “high” Christology (using these terms that I am no longer fond of) over time? And if so, shouldn’t the views of the Synoptic Gospels be “higher” than the views of Paul? But they’re not! They are “lower.” And I simply did not get it, for the longest time.

But I get it now. It is not a question of higher or lower. The Synoptics simply accept a different Christological view from Paul’s. They hold to exaltation Christologies and Paul holds to an incarnation Christology. And that, in no small measure, is because Paul understood Christ to be an angel who became a human.

Wow, this is a novel view. Can’t wait to hear the reasoning. It’s almost blindingly obvious (as you’ve stated repeatedly before) that Paul always spoke in an Adoptionist manner, as did, I believe (and you used to believe) the earliest Christians. Before deliberate alterations, as you know, Mark and even Luke had several Adoptionist-supporting passages, and even John features more subordinationist messages than one would think, given the exalted Hymn tacked onto the beginning by later scribes. This Angel theory will be an interesting one.

Huh? It sure looks like the other Way around. Per Paul live Jesus was unreMarkable (this explains why Paul never believed in live Jesus). The implication from Paul’s related silence is that live Jesus was just an ordinary man before he received The Spirit. “Mark” as usual follows Paul (and why wouldn’t he since Paul is the only known significant Christian author before “Mark”) and shows Jesus as just another ordinary guy/sinner who needs baptism for the reMission of sins). There’s your development from Paul to “Mark”.

I know this question has nothing to do with your topic but i would like very much if you could tell me whether it is true or not that the The concept of eternal torment in hell is nowhere to be found in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts?

Paul needed an incarnation Christology (or perhaps, a divine Christology) in order to make his three-part system work. The bait in Paul’s message was the resurrection. Do this and you will be raised up into eternal life. But to make that work, Paul needed substitutional atonement. You are sinners but salvation by the grace of God through faith that Jesus is your atonement can fix that. But to make that work, Paul needed a divine Jesus, one that could bear the punishment of death and come out of it.

I have not previously thought of Paul seeing Jesus as an angel, but I have always thought that all three descriptions of Paul’s conversion given in Acts seem to involve a heavenly Jesus and then Paul seems to have very little to say about the life of the earthly Jesus relating more to the heavenly than to the earthly Jesus. I am trying to fit this with what you have taught us about Gnosticism and Docetism, Did Paul see Christ as being separate from Jesus? .

Why do you think earliest Christians, as echoed by Paul in 1 Corinthians, came to view Jesus as having ‘died for our sins’? Were they simply reaching back to OT passages like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 in an attempt to explain the Christ event, post hoc? Or do you think Jesus himself ever made this claim, either in his ministry or as formal words of institution at the Last Supper? This question goes to the very heart of Christian belief and represents one of my major doubts about orthodox theology, given that we can now marshall abundant counter-evidence that modern humans evolved by natural- and social- selection processes operating over hundreds of millennia to be *both* saints *and* sinners. Thanks for any reply.

No, I don’t think Jesus made any such claim. And I think the appeal to the passages of Scripture came only after the had interpreted the death as salvific (although I could be persuaded otherwise). My sense is that once they came to think Jesus had been raised, they realized God was on his side, and in that case they had to explain why he had died, and decided it must have been God’s will, and not for any wrong that he himself did…. and so it went, until quickly they thought, “it must have been not for his sins but for the sins of others.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if Paul had written a book of systematic theology to work with?? Bothers me profoundly that he spends so much time adivising churches on behavioral issues and rarely if ever bothers with theology. Isn’t that more important, especially in a faith-over-works theology??

I think this issue is similar to the “Lord / Son of Man” title used for Jesus. Paul never uses the “Son of Man” title, he prefers “Lord”, while synoptic gospels make a large use of “Son of Man”. Also, “Lord” is used in others NT epistles and by church fathers, while “Son of Man” has (almost) never been used outside/after Gospels. I think this difficult to explain if we just consider the straight chronological orders of the NT writings.
The only explanation, in my opinion, is that the Gospels go really back to some ancient traditions the pre-dates Paul – probably back to the historical Jesus himself. At the time of Paul, Son of Man title was already “superseded” by more evoluted christological titles like “Lord”.
But the historical accuracy of the Gospels preserved the Son of Man designation

Yes, agree. Although I believe that titles such as “Son of Man” (and maybe, with less probability ,”Son of David”) could actually go back to earthly Jesus, while “Lord” is a christological title that can only have been used after resurrection appearances.

I’m really looking forward to see how you will deal in your book with christologies of “pre-Paul” period, a period of which we have no direct witnesses, a sort of “grey area” well described by the late Martin Hengel when he said that “there was more development in christology during the period from the crucifixion of Jesus to the writing of St Paul’s letter to the Philippians, than in the following seven centuries of the development of patristic dogma”.

Most of the NT writers (Cheney and Black say “all of [them]”) were familiar with and influenced by the Book of Enoch, ch. 37-71 (http://www.ccel.org/c/charles/otpseudepig/enoch/ENOCH_2.HTM), which predates the earliest NT writings by several decades. John of Patmos gives a comparable statement (Rev. 1:7, 13; 14:14), and the designation from Ethiopic Enoch probably goes back to Dan. 7:9ff.

It’s really a mistake to separate the incarnation and exaltation Christologies, and to view the NT Gospels and Paul as expliciting expressing one or the other. In fact, both Christologies are expressed in varying degrees by Paul and the Synoptics. As you know, Matthew speaks of Jesus as born “by the Holy Spirit,” and he relates how the chief priests and scribes inform the magi where he was to be born according to the Hebrew prophets. The Synoptics repeatedly report Jesus as fullfilling prophecy (count the phrase “for it is written”). He relates how Jesus explains (Matt. 22:41-46) to the Pharisees who the Christ (Messiah) is – i.e., as a preexisting Being. Of course, the Pharisees dared not ask him another question because it went against their entrenched belief that he was a futuristic “son of David,” not the “son of God.” This is incarnational Christology! This view does not preclude exaltation stages or experiences that a spiritual being (we are all in this category) must accomplish while inhabiting a human body.

If you read the passage, it will eventually become clear. Jesus is quoting from Ps. 110, in which David is referring to the Christ (Messiah), of Whom cannot be the “son of David” but rather a pre-existent Being-Angel-Son of God. And, Peter viewed Jesus the exact same way as Jesus viewed himself – as both “Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:35-36). Paul viewed Jesus the same way, as you are just now coming to realize. The “Virgin Birth” is incarnation Christology in a nutshell, of which the magi and others knew well in advance.

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